The Enervee Blog

Hacking Away on the Cleanweb in Berkeley

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Katzman) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 04:13:00 +0000

I spent the weekend up in the San Francisco bay area as Enervee was one of the technical partners for the UC Berkeley Cleanweb Hackathon and I was also asked to be a judge. There were around 30 participants with a mix of students and working professionals bringing a wide range of skills sets.

The Hackathon had three tracks to pick a challenge from: Smart Homes, Green Button data, and Green Transport. I was truly impressed by how much each of the five participating groups was able to accomplish in only 24 hours. The two most exciting concepts were Thermostatly, an app that integrated with Twitter to adjust your thermostat and share savings with your friends, and Friends on the Go, a web site that incentives you to take public transportation by connecting you with fellow riders for a fun chat, business networking, or even dating.

All in all, a great effort by all involved and I hope to see these ideas come to fruition. Enervee is always eager to have more partners to work with and we look forward to expanding our energy efficiency scoring into central air systems and transportation.

After Earth Day: Stay Energy-Smart!

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Katzman) — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 02:25:00 +0000

It's been a long last two months as we cranked away on developing an entirely new look and feel to the web site. To coincide with Earth Day, we have launched the new energy-smart version of Enervee which expands the Enervee Score to seven categories and brings a whole host of new features, including:

Five new categories with the Enervee Score: dishwashers, washers, dryers, freezers, and air conditioners
Top 20 rankings for each category based on features like "Energy efficient high-capacity dryers"
Recommendations for high efficiency products based on the product you are viewing
Brand rankings per category
Introducing Enervee U the Energy Efficiency Education Center

Earth day is a good reminder for all of us to live a more sustainable life. We think it's great to focus your efforts on this endeavor for a day, but what can you do to make a positive impact during the rest of the year? Thinking about your home, there's a good chance that many of your main household appliances are racking up much bigger utility bills than they should be.

As an example, electric clothes dryers can differ in energy cost by up to 55% depending on their size. This means that if your dryer is bigger than it should be, it could be costing you over a thousand dollars in wasted electricity versus an efficient model that is the proper size.

Take a look at our product recommendations to find out how much you could be saving on your household appliances.

Enervee Wins Audience Choice Award at Utility Conference

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Katzman) — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 22:08:00 +0000

Last Thursday, Matthias and I traveled down to San Diego for the 5th Annual ESource Utility Marketing Conference. The conference focused on how to implement new ideas in both residential and business marketing strategies.

We were very excited to participate in the Marketing Ventures: The Pitch Panel where we had seven minutes to present the Energy-Smart Customer Engagement platform to an audience full of utility marketing managers. We shared an exciting new video highlighting our soon to be released product features and also an overview of how Enervee can help utilities to reach the large percentage of their customers (61% in a Harris Interactive survey) who are not currently aware of energy efficiency incentives.

Our pitch resonated well and we won the audience choice award! Check out the very cool maracas we received as prizes in the photo above. Also take a look at a write up of the conference on the ESource web site here.

Enervee Shortlisted for Future Energy Competition

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Katzman) — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 20:42:00 +0000

A lot has been happening at Enervee lately and the exciting news is that we have been shortlisted for the Future Energy pitch competition. Future Energy is a series of events that connects entrepreneurs, researchers, and private investors in the energy and clean-tech industries to develop and commercialize radical solutions to the world’s energy challenges.

We are in the running for the Silicon Valley event hosted at Stanford at the end of April where 8 startups will get to pitch to investors including Kleiner Perkins, Khosla Ventures, and Shell International. The next step is for a committee to select 6 out of the shortlisted companies as finalists. There will then be an additional 2 companies that are selected as finalists based on having the highest number of popular votes. We feel confident that we will get selected by the committee but to guarantee our spot it would be much appreciated if you can click on the "View My Project" link below and vote for us.

Thanks! And stay tuned for a big update to the Enervee site in early April.

Energy-Smart Shopping Video

noreply@blogger.com (Matthias Kurwig) — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 03:26:00 +0000

We've been busy working on a fun way to tell the Enervee story and wanted to share our latest video. We feel that buying electronics and appliances is all about being energy-smart, which is the true essence of Enervee. We are eager to hear your feedback and would love if you could share your personal stories. Just post your comments below. Thanks much!

Is your fridge eating your savings?

noreply@blogger.com (Matthias Kurwig) — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 22:54:00 +0000

While you probably only notice your fridge when it stops working or the freezer ices over, there's a good chance that it is costing you considerably more than it should be. Looking at medium sized fridges on the market (18 to 24in cubic ft of volume), the least efficient model can cost you over twice as much in electricity as the most efficient model. Approximately 10 million fridges will have been bought in 2012 with a potential to save 2.44 billion kWh in electricity annually by choosing the most efficient model. Over five years this would lead to savings of $4.3 billion and 36.6 billion kWh which is equivalent to removing 3.26 million households from the grid.

What's the best style of fridge?

We just released our latest Enervee Report for Refrigerators. A surprising find is that the style of fridge that you own (top or bottom freezer, side by side, or french door) has the biggest impact on how energy efficient it is. The key driver behind energy consumption is related to a fridge's total volume and more specifically the volume of its freezer compartment. The freezer consumes considerably more electricity per cubic inch of volume. On average top freezer models have a smaller freezer compartment than other styles and therefore are considerably more energy efficient. This suggests that not only should you make sure to buy the right size of fridge, but more importantly one which with an appropriately sized freezer compartment.

Does age matter?

Another important consideration is that fridges become increasingly less efficient as they age and the cooling system degrades. Five year-old fridges consume 10% more energy, ten year-old fridges consume 20% more energy, and 15+ year old fridges consume 30% more energy. Imagine if you have not replaced your kitchen fridge in over a decade and you also have a spare fridge in the basement. You may be spending an additional thousand dollars in unnecessary electricity costs over the lifetime of each fridge.

Score my Fridge

While we realize that replacing the fridge is not at the top of your holiday shopping list, it is one of the few purchases that will actually save you money in the long run. To help you determine when is the right time to upgrade your fridge, we have released a "Score my Fridge" app (enervee.com/myfridge) that scores the energy efficiency of over 80,000 fridges dating all the way back to the 1980s. By plugging in the model number of a fridge, it is scored and compared versus all fridges currently on the market.

Enervee's goal is to make you aware of the energy efficiency of all of your home appliances and electronics at the moment it really counts - when you are comparing products to make a purchase. For now we have released our Enervee Score for TVs and Fridges but are working hard to soon cover the other major home appliances and electronics.

Posted by +Alex Katzman

Is There Room for Energy Efficiency in a High-Tech World?

noreply@blogger.com (mandy lipka) — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 01:35:00 +0000

Recently, we’ve been considering the energy use and consumption of our beloved gadgets and the Internet. GreenBiz shared an interesting infographic on the power-hungry Internet which spurred our thinking– Is there hope?

Image courtesy of Nest

Of course.

As GreenBiz suggested, the industry isn’t standing idle and throughout the next four years, green data center investment is projected to grow by 164%. But there’s another reason– It’s not likely innovators just stop innovating.

Take Tony Fadell, one of Sillicon Valley’s biggest names who is known as the Father of the iPod, for example. Since leaving Apple in 2010, Fadell has taken his experience and the lessons that made the brand so iconic, and put them into practice at his latest venture, Nest.

They key: Success is about much more than a good product.

"It's about every touchpoint where the consumer interacts with the brand," he says in an interview with BBC.

"Whether that's at learning about the product, buying the product, using it, servicing it, unboxing the product - all of those places are consumer touchpoints and you need to look at those in as much detail as you do the product-user interactions."

This is something Apple turned into an art form. So how is Nest running with the lesson? Fadell brought it to the household thermostat.

BBC explains Fadell "stumbled" on the idea after exploring eco-friendly products and discovering such devices controlled half or more of the average home's energy bill.” (Sound familiar?)

His device, Nest, features a crisp, minimalist graphical readout surrounded by a metallic band and aims to "learn" how to save energy by studying owners' habits. Perhaps unsurprisingly it can be adjusted remotely by a smartphone app. It went on sale in the US and Canada last year.

He says his current focus is to launch Nest in 63 countries, including the UK, but proves reticent about speculating what he might develop next.

More connected household devices would be an obvious bet, but he mocks the idea of an internet-linked kettle or toaster, saying he can't see the point.

Regardless of what Fadell plans to develop next, he’s giving us hope.

How buying the right TV will save $1.34 billion in annual energy costs

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Katzman) — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 22:52:00 +0000

In this day and age of technological innovation, you would think that televisions of the same size and type would have a similar power consumption. All TVs are definitely not made equal, in fact it is quite the opposite. LED TVs are usually at least 20 to 25% more efficient than LCDs or Plasmas. Taking 37 inch TVs (average size sold in 2012) as an example, there is a surprising 400% difference in energy usage between the most and least efficient models. And when you consider that approximately 40 million new TVs will be purchased in 2012, there is potential to save 11.2 billion kWh of electricity and $1.34 billion dollars in annual electricity costs by choosing the most efficient model.

Taking a Million Households Off the Grid

Since it's difficult to grasp what 11.2 billion kWh actually means, let's convert that into people. Using the EIA's average consumption benchmark, this translates into 996,454 households worth of energy that could be saved by choosing the more energy efficient 37 inch TV. When you think about it, this would be the same as taking the cities of Boston and San Francisco off the grid. And in terms of reducing CO2 emissions, it would be comparable to removing 1.5 million passenger cars from the road.

This scale and impact of simple purchase decisions, led us to create the Enervee Score which we like to think of as the MPG (miles per gallon) rating for electronics and appliances. And the best part is that by choosing TVs with a higher Enervee Score you can save money and save the planet at the same time without making sacrifices on the latest product features.

Score my TV

To help you figure out whether it is the right time to upgrade your TV, we have released a "Score my TV" app that scores the energy efficiency of TVs dating all the way back to the 1990s.

For now we have only released the Enervee Score for TVs, but we plan to have over 20 product categories scored by the end of the year. Imagine if the example above also included the potential savings for all of the appliances and electronics in the home - the impact to US consumers would be tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars.

Better Information Makes for Better Decisions

noreply@blogger.com (Matthias Kurwig) — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 02:21:00 +0000

When we set out to build Enervee with the vision to create the world's first personal energy efficiency scoring platform there was much excitement among friends and family - but there were critics too. The criticism was articulated in different ways but at the end of the day it all boiled down to "people don't care about energy consumption they just want to buy the latest thing". Sure we do and I am as guilty as the next tech-addict buying a third iPad just because I have to have that retina display. But wanting the latest gadget doesn't mean I want to ignore energy efficiency and its cost to me and to our planet. In fact, I would love to outsmart the Geek Squad by telling them that it is no longer true that plasma TVs suck more power than LCD TVs, or that some of the latest LED TVs use half the power of their LCD alternatives. But to do that I need better information available to me when I shop. When I buy a car there is the MPG sticker on the windshield, I just want the same thing for energy when I buy appliances and electronics.

After working on it for two years we have now introduced the MPG rating for TVs - we call it the Enervee™ Score. Naturally I am a bit biased, but I am convinced that soon we will all check the Enervee Score before we buy a product. Why am I so sure? Have a look at the Enervee Score report for televisions below. That's the type of information I can brag about to my Geek Squad friends and I can't wait for our report on refrigerators later this month.

In other words, I strongly believe you too care about energy and its cost to your wallet and the planet - we simply need better information to make better decisions.

From: Enervee.com
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Know Your Enervee Score: Energy Efficiency Made Easy

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Katzman) — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 19:16:00 +0000

Back in May, I was looking to buy a new flat screen computer monitor for my home office. After spending ten minutes searching online, I found the best deals at J&R Electronics and decided to go down to their Sunnyvale store to make sure that I could find a model that would connect successfully to my MacBook Air laptop. I was overwhelmed by the vast selection of flat screen monitors and really had no idea which one to go for after I narrowed my search down to a 23" size monitor and a budget of $200. My real dilemma was how to figure out which monitor was the most energy efficient.

Most of the models were Energy Star compliant, but without taking the time to do some serious research there was no quick way to know whether the Samsung, ASUS, ViewSonic, Acer, or HP model was the most efficient. In that moment all I wanted was for each monitor to have some kind of universal energy efficiency score so that I could easily pick the best one similar to how cars have an MPG (miles per gallon) rating comparing all the different makes and models. Since we had been working hard on an energy efficiency rating system at Enervee for some time, I jumped on our website to help me with my purchase. By sorting 23" monitors by energy efficiency, I settled on the Acer S231HL as it was rated "very energy efficient"and had the best purchase price of $189 (down to $149 as of today). Decision made easy!

Enervee's goal from the very beginning was to make energy efficiency practical so that you would not get frustrated trying to compare operating and standby watts and could just focus on buying the product that had all of features you were looking for. This led us to create the Enervee Score, a 0 to 100 (best) rating that ranks the energy efficiency of any product by comparing its energy consumption and capacity (i.e. size, volume, or processing speed). We decided to break down the score into three easy to understand categories: older models (0 to 50), fairly energy efficient (51 to 75) and very energy efficient (76 to 100). While the mechanics of calculating the score do get quite technical (click here for the full details), the good news is that using the score is easy.

Basically, the higher the Enervee Score of any product, the less energy it consumes for its size and the more money you save on electricity costs. Let's look at a quick example, a Sceptre 46in LCD TV with an Enervee Score of 42 consumes about 5X more energy than a comparably priced Samsung 46in LED TV that has an Enervee Score of 93. We'll assume I live in New York City where the average residential electricity rate is 21 cents/kWh, the potential savings in my electricity cost for a 5 year period is $365 by choosing the Samsung TV. Now that's if I'm watching the US average of 5 hours of TV per day. If I have children at home who play a lot of video games and the TV set is on for 12 hours per day, the potential savings for the Samsung is almost $900 over 5 years. You can imagine that if I have 3 TVs at home, the savings potential gets into the thousands of dollars very quickly.

While we like to think of the Enervee Score as a great shopping tool, it is also a fun way to share energy efficiency with your family and friends. By taking the average Enervee Score of all the products you own at home, we can assign you a personal energy efficiency score. To find out your personal score, try out our "Score my TV" app at enervee.com/mytv/. It's not only a fun game to see who can be the most energy efficient, but it actually is very beneficial to our wallets and the environment. For now we have only released the Enervee Score for TVs, but refrigerators and dishwashers are on their way soon. We hope to have over 20 product categories scored by the end of the year.

Visit us today at www.enervee.com to use the Enervee Score and be a more efficient shopper!

Enervee and Berkeley Lab win RFP on Energy Efficiency Data

noreply@blogger.com (Alex Katzman) — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 05:41:00 +0000

We wanted to share what we have been working on at Enervee this summer with the big news being that we won a fantastic RFP (Request for Proposal)! Enervee is working together with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) of the Department of Energy to help gather and manage energy efficiency information for electronics and home appliances. This is monumental in helping to achieve our mission of providing actionable energy efficiency and cost data to help consumers, businesses, and governments find better products, saving energy and money for people just like you.

There's a back story on how we got to be part of this amazing opportunity. In June, Matthias and I gave a presentation to LBNL on "Bringing Energy Efficiency and Cost of Ownership to Online Shopping." They were very excited about Enervee's one of a kind, dynamic energy efficiency rating and introduced us to CLASP (Collaborative Labeling and Appliance Standards Program), an organization that is on the cutting edge of research and international policy for energy efficiency. We discovered an exciting opportunity to submit a proposal for a new energy efficiency initiative, SEAD (Super-efficient Equipment and Appliance Deployment), whose main goal is to transform the global market for energy-efficient equipment and appliances.

Last week we were notified that we won the proposal and will begin working on it early next month. Our team will be collaborating with members from the Environmental Energy Technologies and Energy Efficiency Standards groups at LBNL to help define an energy efficiency data standard across SEAD's members in Australia, Brazil, Canada, the European Commission, France, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

More details about the CLASP project can be found at: nrv.ee/claspbid. Stay tuned for upcoming changes to enervee.com. A revolutionary new feature is in the midst of being rolled out that will change the way you think about your household appliances and electronics.

Does energy efficiency really matter?

noreply@blogger.com (Matthias Kurwig) — Fri, 18 May 2012 01:37:00 +0000

The idea of doing Enervee came to us when we realized how difficult it was to figure out how much we pay for the energy consumption of an individual product. The best thing we found was Energy Star and for appliances there is EnergyGuide but these don't actually tell you what you personally will be paying for energy. These ratings use assumptions for how much you will be using a product and national averages for the utility rates leading to energy cost projections that can be significantly different from what your personal cost would actually be. How significant? We'll get to this in a minute.

So we started to build Enervee by identifying all the data and the calculations we would need to show the personalized cost of owning a product and after a few months we had put together a prototype using local utility rates and electricity consumption for about a hundred televisions. The big question we wanted to answer was if the differences between products, utility providers and usage behavior really made a significant difference. In other words - would people really care about seeing these "cost of owning things" when they are shopping. We quickly realized that the difference in energy use between otherwise comparable TVs was huge. Differences of a factor 5x are not uncommon - but what we found even more amazing was how significant the differences were depending on your utility provider and how much you would use the TV. Have a look at the comparison below. Depending on how much and where you use it the electricity cost for the same TV over 5 years can cost you about $160 in Tacoma, WA or over $2,350 on Maui.

Electricity cost for this TV running 8 hours every day for 5 years on Maui is $2,357

Electricity cost for the same TV running 3 hours every day for 5 years in Tacoma, WA is $159

When you look at the bottom section of the screenshots you can see there is not only a huge difference in electricity used but an even larger difference in the amount of greenhouse gas that is produced by using this particular TV with the selected utility providers. The amount of carbon dioxide produced in the example on Maui is 5.4 tons compared to 23 lbs for the Tacoma example over the same 5 years. The equivalent in emissions from consumed gasoline is 545 gallons vs. 1 gallon. Looking at the data for more product categories we were quickly convinced that most people would care to know about these differences in cost to them and to the environment.

Researching it more we found something else that made us quite certain that most people would care about energy cost if the information was more accessible and actionable to them. Looking at the historical development of energy prices in the US you can see that, adjusted for inflation, today they are well above 1973 levels (+163%) while raw materials and food are far less (-58%). And many predict that the big increase in energy cost is yet to come.

Looking at all this we believe that information about the "cost of owning things" will play a much larger role in how we buy things and Enervee can help with making better purchase decisions. What do you think? Please let us know in the comments below.

Building a business that cares about energy.

noreply@blogger.com (Matthias Kurwig) — Wed, 09 May 2012 01:31:00 +0000

A week ago we launched enervee.com - a website that enables consumers, businesses and governments to buy products based on the personal cost of owning them rather than just the purchase price. Today we are launching the Enervee blog under the name "vee care". I have been thinking a lot about what topics to cover with the "official Enervee blog" and think it will be most authentic - and hopefully most interesting - if we make it about our journey of building a business that cares about energy. We will be talking about what Enervee is about, namely saving on energy and shopping smart by understanding the energy cost of the products you are buying. And we will also talk about the experience of building the Enervee business. We have been working on this for quite some time and there are plenty of anecdotes that I think are worth sharing. To kick things off, allow me to do a little promotion of our business by embedding the Enervee video. It is a great way to convey what we are all about. Enjoy!